Reason: We don’t think this charter is as clear on some points as it should be, such as revenue sharing details, but we also acknowledge that it is an aspirational document, and has no legal, social, or other binding obligations on governance. Just like the Law of Chains more broadly, these are more guidelines to begin and maintain conversations with potential partners, and to our reading, in no way constrains the degrees of freedom of Optimism governance.

Reason: This is a tiny step, and certainly not sufficient to satisfy ourselves or the other delegates who, combined, signed a petition to accelerate decentralization. 17,000,000 OP currently stands in support of that petition. This proposal still requires Foundation permission to post a proposal, allowing them to keep a de facto veto. It also does not address the much more valuable ETH owed to governance. Overall, we find it disappointing that this appears to be the single item granted (if it even counts, given the permissioned nature of how it will work) on the extensive list that delegates requested. It’s beyond frustrating that Foundation feels the need to oversee governance spending, but governance is not allowed to oversee Foundation spending. It’s also ironic, given that governance is by far the smaller spender of OP tokens.

Reason: This mission targets a vertical that has not yet become established, much less dominated by a competing chain. The total budget is 15,000 OP, which also makes this a low-risk RFP to craft.

Reason: These all are needs or experiments we find compelling – in particular the very successful and in-demand audit grants. The other Mission Requests are helpful for business development and attracting new users and protocols to Optimism. Others simply seemed like they needed more clear scope or different budget sizing to be effective. Or were low priority because they are largely done but not easy to find in one place (e.g. auditing the financial holdings of governance), so don’t require an entire Mission Request.

Reason: We fully recommend that this be approved, but because GFX Labs is on the Grants Council, which collectively proposed this poll, we are required under updated rules to abstain for our own vote.

Reason: There is only one candidate, who previously served as an appointed Security Council member.

Reason: These candidates include incumbent Security Council members (Ethernaut, nanexcool, yoseph). It also includes new candidates that help provide geographic, political diversification. At present, the Security Council is unlikely to be called upon in an emergency due to the permissioned nature of proposals, so this is a good opportunity to cycle in fresh candidates.

Reason: This upgrade is in response to the security vulnerabilities identified here.

Reason: Oxytocin is the only sitting member seeking reelection, and we think having experience on this body is important for continuity of best practices. The remaining candidates came recommended by other delegates, who generally cited the candidates’ involvement and energy. We view the Code of Conduct Council as an excellent intermediate role within Optimism governance, and ensures a steady pipeline of new governance participants to move into more demanding roles down the road.

Reason: While we believe there needs to be more focus on Optimism mainnet, fostering user growth and economic activity on partner chains is also important and we support this funding allocation. GFX Labs is also one of the three voting members to review and approve such grants applications, so we are well positioned to keep the funds tightly focused on proven ways to grow adoption.

Reason: These are the Missions we believe most strongly in amongst those proposed. Their budgets are modest and the utility for each should be obvious from the titles alone.

Reason: These are the Missions we believe most strongly in amongst those proposed. All are tightly focused on attracting developers or productive capital to Optimism mainnet.

Reason: AnthiasLabs is a risk and technical contributor at a variety of other protocol governances. M4rio.eth is a security reviewer with more than 100 reviews to date.

Reason: Blockdev has experience with ZK and security, having done audit work for projects like Blast, LIFI, and zkEVM. Wildmolasses (aka Ed) is a Coinbase engineer who is already a contributor to the OP stack. Devtooligan is a developer with security experience. Alextnetto.eth has significant web2 development experience and currently works with his a team of 10 developers for the web3 company he founded, Blockful. Noah.eth is the Head of Security Reviews at Spearbit.

Reason: These are all incumbent Grants Council members. We believe that all of them have done a good job, and retaining experienced members is important for the continued improvement of the Optimism grants process.

Reason: This program was not utilized in Season 5, so we don’t see a need for expansion. We also don’t want a large number of new Superchain members to be able to dominate governance decisions on expenditures when they may have varying amount of skin in the game for Optimism mainnet’s success.

Reason: This mostly clarifies and slightly reduces the scope of duties for the ACC. In particular, it is now clearly stated that the ACC is not required to vote on proposals that are not technical upgrades or subject to Citizen’s House veto, though it may still choose to do so if it prefers.

Reason: GFXlabs, Katie, MattL, Michael, MoneyManDoug, Jackanorak, and Mastermojo are all incumbent Grants Council members. We believe that all of them (which includes ourselves) have done a good job, and retaining experienced members is important for the continued improvement of the Optimism grants process. Tane is a group with technical background and that has been active in governance across several projects. Sov has grants experience from Gitcoin. Jrocki is a former Optimism Foundation employee, and has been engaged with governance. He co-hosts an L2-focused Twitter Spaces with Michael. Derbygold.eth has grants experience from Polygon. Brichis is the current Anticapture Commission lead, and we think moving her to a more active role would better utilize her energy and commitment to Optimism

Reason: We still think this is too much OP, but at this point require a budget for the Code of Conduct Council to continue operating. We would have preferred a number much closer to the 18,000 OP budget of last season.

Reason: These changes have been reviewed and recommended by OP Labs and Coinbase engineers.